IND - close relationships, passion and intimacy

most people in modern cultures agree that to miss out on love is to live a poorer and emptier life compared to people who experience those things.having social bonds is linked to better mental and physical health. people who marry live longer and healthier lives than people who never marry. - HOROWITZ ET AL - 1996. however unhappy marriages are probably worse than never marrying
1. may be thet people who are healthier and saner to start with are more likely to marry, so better health may not be a result of marriage.
PASSIONATE OR ROMANTIC LOVE - strong feelings of lo0nging, desire and excitement towards a special person. focus on sex.
1. there is a PHYSIOLOGICAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO IN (PRESENCE OF PEA (phenylethylamine). people who are passionately in love have high levels of PEA. a neurotransmitter that sends tingling sensations of excitement.
  1. HONESTY - honesty is crucial for relationship success. discepency between idealisation view and complete honesty. people in passionate love often idealise and overestimate their partners, relationships thrive when couples retain their best behaviour in front of their partners.
    1. feel insecure if partner doesn't know the real you but hard to sustain idealised view. SWANN - 1998 - people were most intimate with partners who viewed them favourably. HOWEVER marriage was most intimate when partners saw them as they were.
COMPANIONATE LOVE - mutual understanding and caring. also called AFFECTIONATE LOVE.
LOVE AND CULTURE
1. is romantic love universal?
  1. is a CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION.?
    1. SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONIST VIEW - cultural values and meanings have shaped personal feelings and changed the way people run their loves.
  2. romantic love universal
    1. JANKOWIAK - 1995 - SUGGESTS THAT PASSIONATE LOVE IS NOT A PRODUCT OF WESTERN CULTURE.
      1. romantic love is not a social construction, romantic love is found in most cultures, forms and expression vary by culture, attitude varies by culture and era.
        WESTERN culture sees passionate love as an important part of life. people in other cultures feel love as we do but don't place the same value on it and don't feel a life without passionate love is a lesser life.
        STONE - 1977 - passionate love in previous europe was seen as a form of mental imbalance that made people act in crazy ways. they didn't think passionate love was a good basis for marriage.
LOVE ACROSS TIME
1. COMPANIONATE LOVE may be harder to create than passionate love. companionate love is what makes a marriage stable, trusting and lasting.
2. passionate love is important for starting a relationship. passionate love only exists for brief periods of time and in the past is compared with insanity.. COMPANIONATE love is important for making it succeed and survive.
3. JAMES - 1981 - over time passion decreases, only experience passion for one maybe 2/3 years if lucky. JAMES found that frequency of sexual intercourse declined by about half after the first year of marriage.
  1. BLUMSTEIN ET AL - 1983 - decrease in passion can be found in data about frequency of sexual intercourse, as time goes by, a married couple has sex less and less.
    1. ARD - 1977 - sex continues to go down as the couple grows old, not entirely due to aging as if a couple divorce and then remarry then sex increases with new partner
4. the decline of sexual desire is normal but is often mistaken for a sign of being out of love. biochemical rush declines. PEA declines as it is a feature linked to new love.
5. married people have sex more often, more satisfying, married people more likely indicate physical or emotional satisfaction from sex. single people spend more time at each sexual episode, more exual partners, try new things.
STERNBERG'S TRANGLE
1. THREE COMPONENTS - PASSION - emotional state with high bodily arousal.... INTIMACY - feeling of closeness, mutual understanding and concern... AND COMMITMENT - conscious decision, remains constant.
  1. after time, a good relationship will have less passion, but high intimacy and commitment.
    1. a whirlwind romance on the otherhand has high passion and intimacy but no commitment.
  2. any given love relationship can mix any of the three components.
    1. love at first sight usually involves low intimacy.
  3. an ideal love might contain substantial measurements of all three ingredients, if none of the three were present then sternberg would say there is no love.
  4. all three components have different time courses, passion arises quickly but tends to diminish after a while, intimacy arises more slowly. but continues arising for a long time.
DIFFERENT TYPES OF RELATIONSHIP
1. EXCHANGE RELATIONSHIPS - more frequent in broader society, increases societal progress and wealth/
  1. EXCHANGE RELATIONSHIPS - based on reciprocity and fairness, each person does something for the other with the expectation of getting a benefit in return. e.g. a dentist or other service.
2. TWO DIFFERENT TYPES OF RELATIONSHIP - EXCHANGE AND COMMUNAL - CLARK - 1984
3. COMMUNAL RELATIONSHIPS - more frequent in close intimate relationships, more desirable, healthier and mature.
  1. COMMUNAL RELATIONSHIPS - based on mutual love and concern, people do things for each other without expecting to be repaid. e.g. two sisters.
4. BLUMSTEIN ET AL - 1983 - couples who pool there money in a communal account while living together are more likely to remain together and get married than couples who work on an exchange basis.
5. ATTACHMENT
  1. BOWLBY - influenced by freudian and leaning theory. he believed childhood attachment predicted adult relationships.
    1. bowlby observed separations of children from their parents during world war 2.
      1. BOWLBY'S original theory included three types of attachment, which SHAVER later extended. the categories range along a continuum, from pulling close to pushing away.
  2. SHAVER - 1987 - identified attachment styles to describe adult relationships.
    1. SECURE - comfortable balance.... ANXIOUS / AMBIVALENT - clingy types who want to be as close as possible and want a complete merger with someone, problem that others don't want to be as close as them. AVOIDANT - who are uncomfortable when others want to get close and they try to maintain some distance.
  3. two dimensional theory - BARTHOLOMEW - 1991 - two dimensions called anxiety and avoidance.
    1. FOUR ATTACHMENT STYLES - SECURE ATTACHMENT - good at close relationships, trust partners etc. DISMISSING AVOIDANT ATTACHMENT - positive towards self, low of others, see themselves as worthy but push others away.
      1. FEARFUL AVOIDANT ATTACHMENT - negative towards self and others, view potential partners as untrustworthy, uncaring and see themselves as unlovable. PREOCCUPIED ATTACHMENT - similar to anxious / ambivilant - want to enjoy closeness but have negative attitude towards self want to merge and cling but worry they will be abandoned. provide too much.
  4. ATTACHMENT AND SEX
    1. SECURE - good sex lives. PREOCCUPIED - use sex to pull others close to them. AVOIDANT - have a desire for connection, may avoid sex or use it to resist intimacy.
SELF-ESTEEM AND LOVE
1. popular belief that you need to love yourself before others - ERIKSON, ROGERS AND MASLOW, not demonstrated by theory or facts.
  1. ERIKSON - people must solve identity crisis before start working on intimacy.
    1. ROGERS - focused on self-actualisation - becoming a better person all round rather than self-love. said people needed to receive unconditional love before they were ready to achieve self-actualisation.
2. SELF-ESTEEM - low self-esteem - may feel unloveable. high self-esteem - may feel more worthy than present partner.
3. NARCISSISTS - high self-esteem, strong, unstable, self-love. harmful to relationships, less committed to love relationships. they approach relationships as having fun and getting what they want. tend to hog credit when things go well but blame partners when things go badly. think they are superior - CAMPBELL AND FOSTER - 2002
4. SELF-ACCEPTANCE - more minimal form of self-love, linked to positive interactions - SCHUTZ - 1999
MAINTAINING RELATIONSHIPS
1. good relationships tend to stay the same over time, popular myth that they continue to improve. key to maintaining a good relationship is to avoid a downward spiral.
  1. SPRECHER - 1999 - people believe their relationships are getting better but they are mistaken.
2. the field changed in order to study long-term relationships, as can't measure in a one-hour lab experiment.
3. MILLER - 1997 - whether relationships last or not depends on temptation to seek other partners. FOUND that how long they looked at photos of attractive single people corresponded with likelihood of breaking up. looked longer = broke up.
4. RUSBULT - 1983 - people stay in relationships when they are happy and satisfied. INVESTMENT MODEL - RUSBULT - factors = 1. satisfaction, 2. quality of available alternatives, will remain in an abusive relationship if think there are no alternatives. 3. how much the person has invested into the relationship, 20 years children, savings etc unlikely to leave. PUTTING THESE FACTORS TOGETHER CAN PREDICT RELATIONSHIPS.
THINKING SYTLES OF COUPLES
1. crucial differences between happy and unhappy couples are based on the attributions they make. (the inferences about the causes of events)
2. RELATIONSHIP ENHANCING STYLE OF ATTRIBUTION - partner did something nice say due to internal "nice guy" etc, if bad say "oh due to work" - external. good acts internal, bad external.
3. DISTRESS MAINTAINING STYLE - good acts are external and bad are internal. once this attribution is in place, good actions tend to be discounted.
4. OPTIMISM IN THE RELATIONSHIP - MACDONALD AND ROSS - 1999 - happy couples have an idealised version of their relationship. couples rate themselves more positively than do their parents and roomates,
  1. DEVALUING ALTERNATIVES - JOHNSON AND RUSBULT - 1989 - people in lasting relationships do not find others appealing. people in lasting relationships didn't find others appealing. linked to MILLER - 1997 study where looked at attractive faces longer, broke up, temptation.
SEXUALITY
1. humans form relationships based on two separate systems, ATTACHMENT SYSTEM - gender neutral. SEX DRIVE - focus on the opposite sex. LOVE COMES FROM ATTACHMENT DRIVE, INDEPENDENT OF GENDER.
  1. DIAMOND - 2003 - attachment and sex are somewhat separate.
2. SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONIST THEORIES - cultural forces and socialisation shape how people assign meaning to their lives. sexual attitudes and behaviours are dependent on culture. sexual revolution changed sexual attitudes rapidly. sexual desire is seen as the result of social and political influences.
3. EVOLUTIONARY THEORY - BUSS - 1994 - gender differences are based in reproductive strategies. sex drive has been shaped by natural selection and its forms are innate. woman can only have a few children so cautious about sex and mating, but biologically men can make many women pregnant and walk away. one time sexual encounters more appealing to men - TRIVERS - 1972
4. SOCIAL EXCHANGE THEORY - analysing the costs and benefits of interacting with one another. economic perspective on sex. the minority gender has more influence. when men outnumber women, people have little extramarital sex and men make commitment before sex. supply and demand.
5. SEX AND GENDER
  1. men have a stronger sex drive than women. COOLIDGE EFFECT - males exhibit renewed sexual interest if introduced to new receptive sexual partners, even after refusing sex from prior but still available sexual partners.
    1. EROTIC PLASTICITY - sex drive can be shaped by social, cultural and situational forces.
  2. SEPARATING LOVE AND SEX - men are more likely to seek and enjoy sex without love. women are ore likely to enjoy love without sex.
    1. women are the gatekeepers to sexual encounters.
  3. all studies point to idea that men want more sex, think about it more, more aroused, more sex partners, more risks.
6. HOMOSEXUALITY
  1. homosexuality changes theories of sexuality, most cultures condemn homosexuality AND natural selection doesn't support it. no clearly defined gender roles, no culturally determined script. sexuality not a product of cultural conditioning therefore. and sex drive not based on evolution it would seem.
  2. BEM - 1998 - "EXOTIC BECOMES EROTIC" - sexual arousal is labelled from the emotional nervousness resulting from exposure to exotic. difficult to test and verify this theory. homosexuals play with opposite gender in childhood so when older the same sex is exotic and unknown.
EXTRADYADIC SEX
1. most reliable data suggests infidelity is rare in modern western marriages. tolerance for extramarital sex is low. extramarital sex is a risk factor for breakups, cannot demonstrate causality.
2. some couples can have an open relationship to sex and many partners. such as during the sexual revolution of the 1970s.
3. many different findings from studies, some say that nearly half of all married people stray - THOMPSON - 1983. HOWEVER more than 75% of husbands and 90% of wives claim to have been entirely faithful - LAUMANN ET AL - 1994
  1. EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY - BUSS - 1994 - has suggested that having affairs and duping the husband into raising a child that is not his is a strategy that makes sense to pass on one's genes.
    1. people who remain faithful are more likely to stay together. extramarital sex is a risk factor for breaking up. - WIEDERMAN - 1997
4. REASONS FOR STRAYING
  1. men desire novelty, sometimes engage in extramarital sex without complaint about their marriage. women's infidelity is characterised by emotional attachment to her lover. usually dissatisfied by current partner.
JEALOUSY AND POSSESSIVENESS
1. CULTURAL theory of jealousy - REISS - 1986 - product of social roles and expectations, sexual jealousy is found in every culture, forms, expressions and rules may vary. society can modify jealousy but cannot eliminate it.
  1. EVOLUTIONARY THEORY OF JEALOUSY - BUSS - 1994 - men ensure they were not supporting someone else's child, WOMEN - if husband becomes emotionally involved with another, the male may withold resources.
    1. jealousy can either focus on sexual or emotional connections with another. men may focus more strongly on sexual aspects than women.
2. CAUSES OF JEALOUSY - jealousy is a product of both the person and the situation, many suspicions jealousy are accurate. paranoid (false) jealousy is rare.
  1. the less of a threat from the other person / interloper, the less jealousy. jealousy depends on how their traits compare to the third party. both men and women are more jealous if the third party is a man rather than woman.
3. SOCIAL REALITY - WICKLUND - 1982 - public awareness of some event, important role in jealousy, high social reality = high jealousy. the more other people know about your partner's infidelity, the more jealousy.
  1. CULTURAL REGULATION - all cultures regulate sex in some ways, cultural regulation is more directed at women, erotic plasticity and paternity uncertainty.
    1. DOUBLE STANDARD - is defined as a pattern of moral judgement that says some sexual behaviours are acceptable for men but not women. supported more by women than men, weaker than is usually assumed.

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	Criado por becky.waine quase 11 anos atrás